It’s raining outside, and raining hard. I point that out as a way of telling you that I won’t get back to the essay today. How many of you thought I would? Honestly? I thought as much. I have excuses. Many of them. Some of them relate to the weather, others to traffic. Seattlians have much experience driving in the rain. The experience, regrettably, does not translate into ability. With rainstorms such as this one, the drivers tend to slow down to 5 mph. They are very cautious. That caution, however, results in taking over an hour and a half to drive home from work today. In the vanpool. Using the carpool lane. Leaving at 4:30pm! That’s early. That’s way before rush hour should start. That is unacceptable! (As are these short sentences. Truly. Pathetic.)

I did manage a few hundred words on the essay, and I even thought of some more important truths. But that’ll wait until tomorrow when a few more of my brain cells have rested up and I’m not so grouchy. I just yelled at Doolies who tried to detract me from writing. She’s looking through other people’s wedding websites because ours is so old and incomplete and not updated and will not be ready for the time the Save-the-Date cards go out. That’s version one, if you remember. I won’t link to version two because you probably won’t be impressed by my purple screen and photoshopped picture of Doolies and me sitting on a rock. It’s bad. Very bad. I need ideas, a fresh IV of them. I need inspiration and dedication and…. I can’t even finish this paragraph. I need to move on. My brain is caving in on itself, like rocks falling from ceilings. Yes, I’m exceptionally poetic tonight. I’m able to take images, grab them by the neck, and choke the life out of them until I distill them into two words that should never be used together. Like this cold-blooded mammal! Man, that was terrible. I’m sorry.

I just gave Doolies the finger. She’s pointing out all the other people’s wedding websites, saying things like: “look, David. Their wedding is after our and their wedding website is finished. And, look, it’s Flash. Why don’t we use [evil] Flash technologies on our website?” And other unprintable things that I can’t repeat and keep my G rating. (Did you know I received a G rating from the National Online Parental Association of…. I can’t do it. I was trying to spell “No Pants,” but I ended up with “No Pa” and gave up. This is a bad- and slow-brained day.)

To make matters worse, after I finally returned to the Castle, Doolies had already started cooking dinner. Do you know what that means? Yes, sports fans, it means since Doolies cooked I had to do the dishes. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate dishes? How lonesome and greasy and sudsy and downright evil the washing of dishes (and clothes) is? Well it is. Evil, that is. And I hate doing it. But after dinner I did it and now my fingers are pruney and my back hurts from bending over the too-low sink. Come to think on it, most of my kitchen is too low for my excessively perfect height. When I chop vegetables and meats, I find my back starting to hurt, as if warning me that I do not belong in the kitchen chopping food and doing dishes. The one thing I’ve learned from the health experts is you’re supposed to always listen to your body. No matter what. And see we’re not mattering what right now. I probably should not spend any more time in the kitchen except when I need to grab chocolate-related foods, or yummy breakfast cereals. It seems only fair to my back and my body and my sanity and my crinkled fingers.

Work was busy today. I went to sleep a bit later than I should have. I told Doolies a couple of days ago to stop me from working on our website at exactly 10pm. Doolies did so, and I had a great night’s sleep. Last night, when Doolies came to me at 10pm to remind me that it was time to go to bed, I used my Jedi mind tricks on her and told her I was fine staying up for another hour working on my project. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t even close to fine. I paid for it this morning, waking up too tired and having to drug myself with plenty of yummy caffeine to keep me going during my meeting-laden day. I blame Doolies. She’s too easily manipulated. And I blame George W. Bush. Clearly he’s at fault too for the dish thing. Okay, that’s enough politics. I don’t want to scare you. I bet you’re surprised I knew the name of my nation’s president. I am too.

I’m trucking right along today. This should be more painful. I should be consternating and worrying about my Jewish essay which is languishing on my hard drive. But I’m not. I’m typing away listening to the rain slam the roof. Doolies is bothering me again. She’s looking at other’s websites and trying to convince me that we need to design our website just like theirs. I’m resisting my fists of throttling anger. I’m anxious tonight, ready to do something but not sure what. I need rest and relaxation and a few moments to catch my brain up to the rest of me.

I can tell when my brain begins to fry like day old eggs on a carburetor (and, no, I don’t exactly know what a carburetor does, but I think it has something to do with a car engine, and therefore gets hot, and therefore may be able to cook an egg on its surface). Earlier I’m sitting at the Shabbos dinner table (and, yes, because of the traffic, and because I didn’t drive into work and leave way early, I arrived home after Shabbos officially started, once again showing I’m a terrible Jew), and talking to Doolies about my day, and I’m trying to describe something (in my current state I can’t think of what that something was, but let’s say the it was the word “carrot,” and how it sounds so orangey, but it’s not—not orangey, that is. The word at least), and I can’t grasp the word. I’m staring into space, wandering through the closed aisles of my brains, and nothing comes to me. Not the word or a description of the word. Just little lights and fairies with umbrellas (except they didn’t have umbrellas and I don’t think they were fairies). And then they’re gone, all of them, and I’m left without the word and Doolies is looking at me worried as if something is wrong and I shake my head and wave her off and change the subject and forget about the word (carrot) and get back to eating the big chicken she cooked dreading the thought of washing dishes in soapy water where my hands will get wrinkly but knowing once the dishes are done I’ll run upstairs and start typing these words and type away my innermost scary thoughts until Doolies against taps me on the shoulder about a wedding website. What’s that dear? A pretty green website? Yes, I’d love to see it. Of course ours will be just as good. No, an ugly website does meet I don’t love you. No, not at all.